Archives for November, 2009

Congratulations to the winners and thanks to all the participants. The stories will go online at TheScian.com within a few days. First prize – “Stalker” by Shuchikar (author’s penname) Second prize – “On board the Ark” by Ankit Bhardwaj Third prize – “Dropping Off” by Ramanand I am pleased to say that all three stories…

My father recalled sometime back the terrible drought that happened when he was a child: since the grains were running low, my grandfather would go out and dig tubers from surrounding fields, my grandmother would make something out of it for the kids. It is an experience that is far removed from my own. My…

I often go to a small woods near our home in Amersham with my daughter. Recently, I came to know a bit of history about the place that gave me a rude awakening and bought home the evil that pervaded societies in the form of Catholic Church in the past centuries (the evil still is…

I loathe tech support so I switched my parents to Ubuntu a while ago. But, you may not be so lucky. Your parents may not like Ubuntu. I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t, but, if they don’t and they must absolutely have Windows, then use Windows SteadyState. It’s free. [via this /. thread]

Read an interesting interview with Roger Penrose at Discover Magazine. Found this part fascinating: So Schrödinger himself never believed that the cat analogy reflected the nature of reality? Oh yes, I think he was pointing this out. I mean, look at three of the biggest figures in quantum mechanics, Schrödinger, Einstein, and Paul Dirac. They…

As I was stuffing my face today, I wondered if the Universe cared. The short answer is no. The slightly longer and more depressing answer is: my existence is more marginal than a speck of stray DNA on a grain of sand staring at vast oceans (that’s literally true, oh the irony…). Clearly, there’s no…

So, I am in India for a short trip and was in Coimbatore yesterday. A truck almost collided with the autorickshaw (three-person tincan with an engine strapped on) I was riding in, then a bus gently nudged me as I was walking on –what I thought was clearly marked–a pedestrian path. Things fall apart: this…